Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/172

164 responsibilities and your great affairs, as you call them. Voyons, they're infantile. I've just shown that I'm a perfection of perfections: therefore it's just the moment to renounce, as you gracefully say? Oh, I was sure, I was sure!" And Miriam paused, resting solicitous, pitying eyes upon her visitor, as if she were trying to think of some arrangement that would help him out of his absurdity. "I was sure, I mean, that if you did come your poor dear doating brain would be quite addled," she presently went on. "I can't be a muff in public just for you, pourtant. Dear me, why do you like us so much?"

"Like you? I loathe you!"

"Je le vois parbleu bien! I mean, why do you feel us, judge us, understand us so well? I please you because you see, because you know; and because I please you, you must adapt me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. You admire me as an artist and therefore you wish to put me into a box in which the artist will breathe her last. Ah, be reasonable; you must let her live!"

"Let her live? As if I could prevent her living!" Peter cried, with unmistakable conviction. "Even if I wanted, how could I prevent a spirit like yours from expressing itself? Don't talk about my putting you in a box, for, dearest child, I'm taking you out of one. The artist is irrepressible, eternal; she'll be in everything you are and in everything you do, and you'll go about with her triumphantly, exerting your powers, charming the world, carrying everything before you."

Miriam's colour rose, through her paint, at this vivid picture, and she asked whimsically: "Shall you like that?"